Not afraid to walk alone. Let's keep on marching for just Each step will wear waves. Okay. Oh! What. And a a me on a Why, that's gonna be nice years We'll be Art, minute. Good evening, everyone and welcome. I'm so thrilled to have you here this evening. My name is Julie Enzer. We are here oops. I'll shut the door Okay. Okay. I'm I'm going to mute everyone, and then I'm going to unmute myself. So this may take a moment What. Good evening. I'll start again my name is Julie Ender. I'm thrilled to welcome you here this evening to the sinister wisdom reading, celebrating our newest separate, classic, a sturdy yes, of a people by Joan Nestle, the song you heard at the beginning was by Carol Kramer performed by your Girlfriend the title Is peace and harmony, Sierra is putting more information about the music into the chat before we begin. It's become our tradition to do a moment for a land acknowledgement. We are in the United States and around the world. Many, if not all of us, living on, occupied unseated land, I am in what is now Dover, Florida, traditional homelands and territories, of the Seminal I invite people to share what lands you occupy in the Chat so that we may honor The indigenous people of the places where we live. We take this pause to recognize the histories of war and colonization, and to imagine a world and to imagine and work for a world where there is a more fair and equitable distribution of resources Bye. As always. We have a chocolate block. Our plan for you. I'm good bye. We will wrap up around 8, Truly you're muted Hey? Muted yourself Honey, you're muted I here I am. Well. When when did I? When did I mute? Where? Where shall I go back to Like it was like 20 s ago A chalk full of hour Okay. We have a Chakra block hour. We'll end about 8 o'clock. We may run a little longer but we will end with our traditional dance number. So we are together tonight to celebrate Joan Nestle and her new book a sturdy yes, of a people. I am holding up what is a facsimile of the book? It is in process, it's being printed right now, and shipping to us on December eighth, and then we will get advanced orders all out in the spirit of celebration I wanted to invite people tonight. To put into the chat things that you are celebrating right now in this month to share with us all in community, and I also want to give a special congratulations to Sierra, who works at sinister wisdom and helps to make so much of our magic happen this week Sierra is moving into their first apartment, and I am thrilled for them, and want everyone to celebrate that milestone tonight with them. If you're joining us, and you are not familiar with sinister wisdom. We are a quarterly journal of Lesbian literature and art. If you're not currently a subscriber, please subscribe a group of monthly sustainers, supports the journal, giving 3, 5, and even $100 a month to support our work I invite you to become a sustainer, if you're able to do that I do send emails every month, when people's gifts come in with behind the scenes, details, and new information about what's coming for the journal we are in the midst of our annual fundraising campaign. I want to thank everyone who's given everyone so generous with us. And again invite people to subscribe, and if they're able to make a monthly gift as a sustainer. Now I'd like to ask Max if you'd show a photo. We have a special event this evening. A generous donor has given 3 Z. Clay prints of this iconic image by T. Corinne that graced the cover of sinister wisdom. 3. This print is on archival paper and ready for framing. It is 16 inches by 20 inches, and for 3 lucky people it's going to be shipped to them flat by ups. Now we've sold one of the prints. One of the prints is available to a raffle, and I have 155 more raffle tickets available you can purchase them online seeier is going to put the link for those into the chat and we will do the drawing as soon as We, have sold 300 tickets, maybe you all will buy up all of the tickets this evening, and we'll do the drawing tomorrow and then finally I have one other one available that we thought we would make available this evening through a silent auction in the chat if you're interested in Bidding on that you can put your bid in the chat, or send a private message to Sierra with information about how much you would like to bid so if you'd like to own a copy of the poster put your bit in the chat and we will sell one Well. Off through a silent auction this evening. Alright! So now we're on to our program. Thank you all so much the book that we're celebrating tonight is a sturdy yes, of a people. It's had tons of advanced support I'm grateful to everyone who purchased it and contributed to help make it a reality. As I said, we're waiting breathlessly on its return from the printer. We hope to have all copies in the mail to folks by December the twentieth I'm secretly aiming for December the fifteenth, so that hopefully they will reach people before the first of the New year this evening we're going to celebrate the book You all know our general guidelines, keep your microphone muted. If you want to show appreciation, wave your hands or use the reaction. Emojis, light up the chat, on zoom. I already see lots of chats, and can't wait to catch up and read those. If you need technical assistance, chat with Max or Sierra. Both are on tap and able to help and, as you see, we are recording the event, and we'll make it available. In the next few days at sinister wisdom. Org slash, Joan nestle a sturdy yes, but people is a part of sinister wisdom. Staff at Classic Series. We've now done 7 or 8. I meant to count. How many, it's a wonderful series that we do to celebrate the Lesbian writing, and I have been so honored to work with Joan and the other great folks you're going to hear from this evening to bring out this incredible! New edition, but before we dive into talking about the book and reading from it, I want to invite Deb Adol from the Lesbian herstory archives which has been a co-sponsor for the event this evening and is just a great community collaborator. I would be happy to oops. I'm here as a replic. Can you hear me? I'm here as a representative of the Lesbian history archives, and speaks for all of us on the coordinated committee. Alex Alexis Amy Colette Desiree, Elvis Hannah, Flavia. John Maxine Morgan, Paula, Rachel, Saskia, Chanta, Stevie, Teddy, and myself. When I say we are proud to be coast sponsoring tonight's event. Will send us to wisdom. We are all volunteers and all committed to making sure the archives survives and grows and is organized safe and available. Thank you, Julie, for all the work you and your team do to make sure the words and thoughts of lesbians are preserved and available, your vision and ours are quite similar. We don't want our history to be lost, forgotten, or revisioned by others. We are the ones who must work to save our stories, so that future generations will understand who we were, and who we are in our fullness, our diversity, and our complexity in 1974 when the archives started, we dreamed that we would not be the lone voice collecting Lesbian history. We did not want to be starting a national organization but rather hope that the communities in the United States and all over the world would create their own archives learning from our successes we're reflecting the needs and understandings of their own communities. This dream has certainly come true, as many archives have been created, and it is with great pleasure that I give a shout out to 2 new careerous brave archives with representatives here tonight the queer Indonesian archives and Qam ra the first Southeast Asian Indian queer arcades. Welcome to our worldwide archival community. Joan was the passionate voice of the archives from the very beginning, and still is to this day, Joan, we are so glad, that sinister wisdom is republishing your work? So that another generation of Lesbians, queer folk, and allies can have access to your words and broadened their understanding of Lesbian life and history. Of sinister wisdom. Deb. Will you make a few comments for us Thank you so much. That was lovely. Thank you to you, and to the entire collective of the Lesbian History Archive for the work that you continue to do to enhance our lives so tonight. Our program's very basic. We have 4 speakers, readers. You may come to think of them as 3 women providing for play before the main event. The reason that I know many of you are here to see and hear Joan necessary but we're going to tease you a little bit before we put her center screen. I'm I'm delighted to welcome our first reader, Caroline de Cruz. Carolyn is a a comrade of Jones in Australia, and she wrote the forward to a sturdy yes, of a people. She's the Carolyn is the author of identity. Politics in deconstruction and democracy. She is a senior lecturer in gender, sexuality and diversity studies at Latrobe University, and she's going to join us this evening with some reflections and meet a brief excerpt from her forward and speak to us, Caroline Thank you, Julie. Hello, everybody. I'm speaking to you from the Orange jury lands of the people from the calling nations, and I like to pay my respects to the ancestors traditional custodians. Past and present. This was a history that I didn't know when I first came to this land. I was 9 years old when I came to these lands, and I didn't know I was unoccupied land till I was in my twenties. It was a history that was not accessible to me, and you know it's a lesson about official history, and what we also learn from Joan is history from below and just as I didn't know about the heritage. Of the land that I'm living on. I also didn't know that I had an erotic heritage till I started reading Joan Nestle. I didn't know I had an erotica heritage, a lesbian heritage a fem heritage, a queer dyke heritage, and that's something they'll Joan has given to me it's a gift to all of us and thank you Julie for making it possible for this now to be a gift to so many. Other people, a gift should go forward, and I'm glad that this gift is going forward to everybody, so I'd like to read 2 paragraphs from the it should have been written as 4 pleasure no Julie that from the Forward to the book and it's my greatest honor to have been asked By John to do this. So here I go. Well, now Melbourne became the most lockdown city in the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic. I went to bed with Joan Nestle several times a week, and if you hook up with her here she'll also touch you every time I read her Erotica or his porn the better word I relive the joy of legs spreading Lips parting, a feeling hot and getting with of bodies opening, holding on and letting go. I love of words, even as language fails, join nestle finds enough space for flesh to speak. Besides taking us through bars and streets, to all that steamy sex. Joan gives us a political and scholar, scholarly heritage, one that I think is really underestimated. Actually she shares her methods for collecting archives, recording history, commemorating places, events, and those people. We need to listen to if we want to build a more just work. She got us through the heritage of solidarity, building between social movements, her words back enough to pay attention to how narratives of desire, power, and justice, are told, or not I work is to learn how to tell what's missing, and amplify those voices that have been too readily Suppressed, working from the margins or history from below. Nestle is a shape shifting storyteller, who gracefully reminds us of what we are in danger of forgetting. So that's to wet appetites into hey? Just a little bit more wet. This is the second paragraph I want to read to you Many of us will. Recognizing these pages. What we understand is Butch, with its historical relations to passing women in the nineteenth and twentieth century, through to what some of us my call mask among other things today the short slicked back hair what joined calls the da style which up Till now. I didn't know, stood for Duck's ass, or, as you might say, docs as depending on your accent. What should the black pants the tough body and dexterous hands which have learned to touch and fuck with care and competence? Not taking these details from Esther's story. Of course, but the beauty of Joan's writing allows us to substitute her proper names with our own. So many of us gasp when we utter the name of the Puerto Rican Taxi driver, Esther, because we, too, have played the role of one of the main character in that story he's Joins with I was standing between her Legs as she sat with the lights of the bar at her Back, her knees jutted around me, and I worried that I could not hold her attention. Off, takes my breath away still, John, from the bar to the ride home. There is erotic charge right down to the point of holding a cigarette, probably a soft pack camels. And steering with ease, one hand on wheel a bad Esther could have lit a zip boy with a one-handed flick of theist as well, the situation and context gives us the switch that turns so many of us on when instructed to raise our hips I'll be a good girl. These repeated codes of style and behavior can be understood through what Judith Butler calls gender performativity. The concept that confirms Nestle's belief that it is politically and socially important to explain why this erotic play is not reducible to the heterosexualized models of Man and woman Jones said that real early and thank you, for those words joined so there it Is that little bit of my full play, and if you want to go any further you're gonna have to read the rest of the book. Thank you. Thank you so much, Caroline. That was fantastic. I remember reading that first paragraph when it came over, and just thinking what a fantastic book this is going to be. Our second reader this evening is Yaya Johnson: Yeva is a sinister wisdom, board member and help to edit a sturdy yes, of a people and she also wrote an introduction. Yeah. But we read some of your words from this project. Thank you so much, Julie, and thank you, Carolyn and Joe, and I'm so happy to be here. So the introduction, I think, is aptly titled invitation to a feast, and I'll read you a few short excerpts from it. Joan, Nassel's writings are wide-ranging, with something to challenge delight. Or spark the imagination for a variety of lesbians well-read lesbians, academic lesbians, queer folk activists, women, loving women, Jewish lesbians, feminists, women, women, people, of all genders, or none and people, of all classes, and political Persuasions, nestle writes about everyday Lesbians and the people who travel with them in all their diversity. Her stories, essays, speeches, and treatises, energized the past as a vibrant part of our present political understanding and welcome, and ever more liberated future, where people can glory in their full selves and identities picture a feast celebrating Joan Nassau's life and work this discover a huge Variety of covered subject matter in Jones essays, non-fiction, poetry, and fiction, all decked out on themed tables where Joan imbues every selection with the political and the personal rating these 2 visions repeatedly through her work to tap into the Myriad ways. The struggle for lesbian rights are integral to the struggles for all human rights And enter a great party hall, where lavish tables are adorned with literary delights. The first table holds a banquet of liberation. Abashedly in your face. Works at this table include my mother liked to fuck and my themquest, where Joan assures readers, and in Jones words all is possible. She says as she surges into me. And now, finally, all is linger to sample complex and multi-layered femme views of the past. Celebrate people, speaking up to free themselves and always possible further into the hall. Sample, delicacies from the history table, featuring important moments during Jones life. Take switch them relationships, sexual courage in the and discover how, as Joan says, as a femme, I did what was natural for me, what felt right I did not learn a part. I profected a way of loving. Serve up a fragile union and see how a colleague in the Civil Rights movement both inspires and disappoints, and why in Jones words Songs like our bodies carry history in a fragile yet enduring savor the history tables, wonderful overview Of Joan Nassau's decades of activism, wherein narratives of liberation pluralities of hope, she invites readers to in her words find common ground on which to protect the dignity of difference and possibility of hope appetite wedding head to the sex table no feast of Jones. Work would be complete without a sex table, and Joe enjoy Jones classic as their story. A bit of what you've heard today, and her thoughtful reconsideration on in on rereading Esther's story, demonstrating vulnerability and rethinking the narrative. She created, and how she might write those narratives in a more gender, inclusive, and gender open society, celebrate the sexual enjoyment of women with cancer, who don't off escape the difficulties of navigating required admiralty to living life in a body transformed by side effects from Medications, treatment, illness and recovery, and the sexual enjoyment of a women of a certain age, or a certain size. In a feeling comes and my cancer travels. You'll go on to other tables. The education table, and at last in the back of the hall, the archives, table, treat yourself to a variety of Jones writings that exemplify the goal of the Lesbian hearstory archives of which Jon nestle is a founder Sample narratives. And documents that are more inclusive of all types of everyday Lesbians, such as the fascinating account of overlapping marginal statuses in Lesbians, and prostitutes and historical his sisterhood and I lift my eyes to the hill the life of naval Hampton is told by a white woman. Imagine this story as the spark for a writer who, I hope, is in his audience today. Depend a biography of a black Lesbian Mabel Hampton. Let the archives table stimulate your appetite for more Lesbian history. After you've finished the feast of this book, and sampled Jones. Generous offerings, read a sturdy yes, of a people selected writings from cover to cover, or enjoy each piece alone. Separate tastes of Jones. Glorious prismatic work delve deeply and enjoy the feast Thank you so much, Eva. That was delightful. And thank you. Eva was really a traveling companion in putting so much of the book together, and met with me repeatedly. And Nava. I thank you and honor your work. As most of you all know, Joan is an international celebrity, not only between the United States and Australia, but in many other parts of the world, and there is an incredible, beautiful new book of Jones writing in translation into French and now I'd like to invite no Amy Grunvald Jones publisher Thank you for being here, thanks to Judy for the invitation, and thanks to Jillian Abbott for being such a constant inspiration, so many of my name is Noimi I'm the founder of e steady. Diy, not for profits Lesbian trans Feminists. Publishing house. We've learned with the press a few years ago with the French translation of Leslie. Fine bags, sandwich blues, and more recently we've published a collection of Genesis writings around the theme of fem identity and them boot relationships. Personally I met Jennifer's work for the first time 15 years ago, when I came across Essay the same question which had been translated for the very first Bush Film anthology published in France, in 2,001 and this piece had a life-changing impact On me, and since then I've been willing to transate and publish our work so a few years ago I wrote to Jen inquiring about the rights, and she immediately agreed to our translation projects, Joe told me that it was a small activist publishing houses, which is initially Permitted the the publication of a work, and so it made sense to her to encourage the same kind of initiative. Today in a different context. This profound recognition of what we're trying to do with the press touched me deeply. After that I got in touch with Christine L. One, the translator and publisher of the first translation of the film question, who would also translate to some other pieces which had never been published, and we're waiting inside of a drawer for the last 20 years, so we decided to add them the collection, and the book was finally published last summer, and since then is available in every book, shop in France, Switzerland, and Belgium, and the on the cover there is a beautiful thing taken by Mold and wendell which is so generously allowed us to use so thanks also to her the reception of the book is mean amazing. Many people here in France have been waiting for years to be able to read the John's work, and many others hadn't heard about it. Prior to this publication. I haven't. They immediately recognize its importance and the book. Lounge gathered around 80 people in the LGBT book shop intrus. The history provider, and we've presented John's work and life, and read out loud some of our writings. Some people blushed obviously, and everybody was deeply moved by the power for words. You 40 years and 6,000 kilometers from where they've been originally written. So thank you, Jen, for eliminating the lives of so many of us. Over the years. Thank you. In France to speak to us briefly about Jones influence there doing me Thank you so much. No, Amy, I'm so glad you could join us for those of you who are doing the math. It is after one Am. In the morning, and we are grateful for her willingness to travel across time to be with us this tonight. So now, without further ado, I'd like to invite Joan to speak to us, to read to us, and to entice us further, as she speaks to us from Australia in the black slip Yes, oh, I! My heart is full to bursting, that's and thank you. All who have made this book possible, who earned my life all of you? I know time is pressing. I want to start by saying that I speak to you from the lands of the laundry people of the cooler nation lands that have never been seated and never will and pay my respects to their elders past and present, i'm just I want to say can You know this Caroline, and Yva. No, Amy and Julie, Julie, my one wish was that my words be back in the community hands that gave them life, and Julie has made that possible. I want to also saying, and Deborah for a lifetime of support, inspiration, and to all who donated money to my old and new friends. And hear people. It's in the morning, people all over the world who are bringing themselves to this event. Hello! I have to honor, who started it all. Nancy Bariano of firebrand books, who in 1980, Nancy, are you there? Oh, okay. Who started? Published a restricted country in 1987. She took risks to do that. My work often wasn't allowed to be sold in Lesbian feminist bookstores, and then so we'll solve them from Sheba. Books in London, brought out the British edition in 1,987, and then in 1998. Felice, Newman and Federica Delacasta, of Cleus Brooks, books published a fragile union, and I want to thank the woman who is sitting here, my woman papa sometimes die who is my Australian world for over 20 years. She has made life possible here. What I have done. Now then, go very quick, because I know time is up in essence. I made a little collage. Oh, little snippets from the book, and so here we go From Stonewall to Soato. The people are resisting, and that chant and this struggle has brought us into new lands. History is not a dead thing, or a sure thing. It lives with our choices and our dreams. It is the story of our glories and our sadnesses. It is at different times a lover, an enemy, a teacher, a profit. It is always collective, memory as complicated and as contradictory as the people who lived. It, but it is always a people's story. Let our tail be mocked by our knowledge of what had to be done, and let it shine with the passion of our attempt. Now just quick. These pieces you know, go from the Seventys. These, excerpts, and I'm not making connections. So you Of all of it, it was your loneliness I could bear least you who want to touch so much became so diminished in your passions. I always saw you coming home from work so tired, so burdened. I wanted desperately to be able to call in from the other room your young husband, full of strength and safety. Then, as I grew older, I wanted you to accept the love of women. Finally, I wanted you to accept my love, but you did, sings your own way like a tenacious farmer chopping earth away from a stone People are moving all around this globe, in unprecedented numbers, following jobs, fleeing catastrophes, finding new air to breathe. There is a great intermingling of ideas, religion, languages, desires, some are comfortable with a multitude of choices, others are rushing to shore up the boundaries of the known world. Why we asserting a politics of exclusion and deprivation, when all else fails, they reach for guns. That was from the 19 seventies You will, lying against the pillows. Your Henry hair spreading across them, your lipstick, making the blue of your eyes even sharper. I get quite on those eyes. I think I see in them the seas. I will never see the endless blue on the maps surrounding the continent of Australia. A blue, I fear, because it is vast and unknown as death itself. You turned toward me when I entered your body, urging me to hurry. I want you. You said, as I bent over you, taking you in my arms. I was deeply moved by your direct request, and by my knowledge that I could meet your need. I kissed hard, and then light kissed your neck and shoulders and throat. I wedded your nipples, my mouth pulling on them through the sheen of your nightgown, I buried my head in your hair, pushing your face to one side, with my cheek. I just wanted to touch you, to taste you, to make up for years of fear, of deprivation. Your breasts swell to my mouth, and I pulled them free of the gown, rounding them in my hands, resting my head against their swell. Here was an ocean I could survive. I slowly caressed the wetness out from between your drawn-up legs, opening you up, making love to every fold and crevice of your sex. Knowing just what I was doing and letting you know that I held your need in my hand. Was making love as much to your belief in me as to your body. I'm Mabel Hampton. I was born on May the second 1,902, and Winston Salem, North Carolina, and left there when I was 8 years old Miss Hamden when did you come out what do you mean I was never in I had a couple of white girlfriends down in the village. We got along fine at that time. I was acting the Cherry Lane Theater. I didn't have to go to the bars, because I would go to women's houses like Jackie Moms. Mabel would have a big party, and all the girls from the show would go. She had all the women there. Miss Hampton never relented in her struggle to live a fully integrated life, a life marked by the integrity of herself, authorship. If I give you my word. She always said, I'll be there. And she was Miss Hampson, Miss Hampton's address at the 1,984 New York City gay pride rally I Mabel Hampton, have been a Lesbian all my life for 82 years and I'm proud of myself and my People. I would like all of my people to to be free in this country and all over the world. My gay people and my black people. This is the history. I wanted a conversation of possibilities, of lineages, of contradictions. In the evening another communal sharing of food. Many of the young people who've been President Tel Aviv, had made their way to Giles House with a slash, shared dinner, feeling a little tired I sat in the backyard taking in the sense of the warm night air. The night sounds of Jerusalem. One by one the students and their friends came to sit around me. They wanted stories of the body, wanted to tales of how we survived the bigotries of the fifties, and how we found each other and tried to imagine another world. We. Lin. We leaned into each other again, and I saw the beauty of the unarmed human body, their hopes for another kind of future held in their bare arms, come back to us one of the young women said when the occupation is over I do not think i'll be able to make this journey again. And so this book, which was the Palestinian and Israeli Peace Activist women translation of my work brought into being by the generosity of so many is the way I honor all those in Palestine and Israel who bear themselves in the film of history and ask for an end to dispossessions walls. And exiles. They called you Freak and me whore. Maybe they always will, but we fight them best when we keep on doing what they say. We should not want or need for the joy we find in doing it. I fucked because I liked it, and Joan, the ugly ones, the ones who beat me are fucked me too. Hard, they didn't run me out of town, and neither can them women who don't walk my streets of loneliness or need don't scream, Penis at me, but help change the world. So no women feel shame or fear because she likes to fuck Things are not really the same. I am at the end of my life, not the beginning. I am not afraid of disclosure, and only rarely shamed the end of the century is not the same as the middle of it. I know now that the eyes of the watchers are cold stones, even when the son of their convictions is riding high in the political sky. I know now that surveillance is the weapon of the insecure, the frightened, the pinched. I still fear, however, the human act of policing, thought, and speech, of hands holding pens to take down our words, never allowing themselves to enter into the messy world of debate. I still fear those who enter rooms cloaked in silent power, and while we speak, plan their retaliations, surveillance is not seeing. It is the quiet planning of prisons. And I dedicate this next This next part to all the trans. Women who have graced my life, the light from the naked bulb under which we worked flashed over Chelsea's, face a strong chiseled face with thin arching eyebrows, and a prominent bony Nose as she spoke Of her days on the street when she was always running from the police and her constant search for place to spend the night. All the years in between those gritty times and the presence seemed to melt away. I listened not only to her words, but to the turn of her head. The softness of a demeanor, the passion of her vision. Here I was in my late fifties, witnessing once again the power of memory to inform conviction the conviction of one's right to survive. Still haunted by the realities of street life. Chelsea had asked not to be left alone at the archives in place. The police showed up, as they sometimes did when some door or window left open, triggered our building along. Chelsea's words poured into the steamy basement demanding that roe be paid for another that room be made for another layer of lesbian history This is now my battle to win back from the specifics of medical treatment from the outrage of an invaded body. We're hands I did not know. Touch parts of myself that I will never see my own body, my own body, so mocked by the hands and lips of lovers. Now so lonely in its fear, touch my scar need, my belly. Don't be afraid of my cancer. And to me the old way, not to the skin cut open, but because I'm calling to you through the movement of my hips. The breath that pleads for your hand to touch the want of me. Heal me, because you do not fear me. Touch me because you do not feel the free future cancer and 6 1. I have, and one I must have Wearing my voluminous flannel nightgown. I knelt before the small wood burning stove, trying to see why the fire was so fragile. I felt huge and awkward in that position. Aware of my rump and falling breasts. But the cold night air demanded that the fire be encouraged to burn at a brisk apace. My younger lover, small and tight in her body, sat on the couch watching me. I didn't like what I thought she saw. I did not like the bigness of my ass. The weight of my body on my knees. And then, just as I worked very hard to accept my lack of appeal, she said in a low, firm voice: you look so fuckable that way Last page 10 days had passed 10 nights of late-night telephone calls to Harvana Hotel just to hear her voice. Hmm. Sometimes she would take the telephone out to the balcony so I could hear the ocean, she would say, pictured her standing in her nightgown, the dark warm night lifting the gowns edges her breasts outlined by the wind ringlets, of hair weighed down with the witness of the Night, the sounds of that ocean never did reach me, but I knew what I was supposed to hear, and I could see in the darkness of my room the Whiteheads rolling onto the beach the curving sea wall that enclosed enclosed the people's suffering and their beautiful city suffering from The vindictive vindictiveness of my own government. She told me, as I yearned for her, that at dusk young lovers draped themselves over the sea wool, their bodies hard with want in all the cities, of the world, torn by war or hatred crumbling from bullets or embargoes Citizens should search for the alley or rooftop that will harbor their love. I want the governments to know this, to know that this century is marked by people's struggle to survive the deadlines of officials, young men and women, the lovers proclaiming their hope in the grips of flesh Havana all torn by history and hope was home to My lover. No, I was jealous of its hold on her. My own history was crumbling, and I, too wanted my love to hold back the emptiness of disaster. The countries are larger than hearts. And so the days passed, and I did. My days This is the last. When we model in the streets hundreds and thousands strong, we carried with with us the lonelier courage of those who risked all because they said to someone of their own sex, Touch me here this small voice is still enough to rule us out of heaven but whatever power comes to us in 1984 beyond. We must not forget that for us passion is our politics. Think of what they fear from us. Love and desire, rebellion and difference, play, tenderness, touch, 3 are children who do not call each other faggot girls who strive for their own glory, men we do not have to hate softness all their words and reasons for exclusions all the tumult of their nose will fall into the shadows of history. I pause. Because I worry. No, you, my queer comrades have given me a world where my words could live. Where my love was kissed by the sun. Where am anger turned to visions of possibilities. These are hard times, but necessary times. These are the times when we be A sturdy yes, of the people. That's Thank you, Joan, that was so beautiful. I see you giving me. Are you going to read it? Are you going to treat us with one thing Well, I have something I I got so organized, but I think I I wrote something from my Australian buddies who I'm just looking forward here Okay. Well, Joan looks forward to. If there are questions that people have feel free to put them in the chat. I'll pose them to Joan but now read us your next Alright. This is something. This is from Diary October, the 20 sixth, 2,005, and I'm thinking of my our friends are like from the Dog Park, where our communities come from let me, tell you of the day windy Am Melbourne, and spring Wind my love tells me the promise of rain, and the billowing gray clouds. Always a good thing, and under the wind, when all turns golden for a minute or 2, searing heat, the promise of the summer to come layers and layers of weather and their dramatic use if the world was not so torn one could just look at the drama of the skies, feeling as if an ancient partnership had been renewed. The small human observver, wandering at the heavens and all they contain. But such is not the case, and as I sit and write between twilt chills and sweat, I feel foolish pausing to tell of the weather in such a world as we are making at the moment this is when I lift my eyes on the page I see a small black dog rolling on the grass I Smell the blossoms of the lemon tree, and one of its fruit sits on the table in front of bay. A perfect yellow globe. Across the path a velvet red kangaroo, or grows as tall as a new gum. Next to it, and a small olive green Australian honey eater drinks from it on the trellis I build on one of a free Saturdays Grows a yellow bank, see arose, into twine with purple and pink sweet peas the flowers we give to visiting Friends to my left in the piece, draw a covenant vegetable garden, grow the bok choy and other Asian greens that come to maturity so fast they become part of every evenings meal now cello has caught the spirit of the wind and races from one end to the off y to the other and Back again, is skipping rough, growing thick in the wind. All this richness, and more the ideas that press at my eyes the time to read and write without disrupt disruption. Just the wind calling to me, unsettling. Hmm! I learned new geographies in these twenty-something years, new Sacred, and Homo torn geographies. Okay. And you'll see I'll send you the chat we'll send you the chat. There's just so much love and appreciation for your work over many years. And people talking about the different connections between different pieces of your work, hearing them together in that pastiche, and and thinking thinking back through time I just I just I just saw Anne. I wanted to thank. Cheryl and Samuel and Anne, who wrote those wonderful endorsements at the back of the book. All of you. These are the steps that make this possible. I just want to say to all the young, to all the writers, singers, dreamers. This is what community can do, and it can hold steadfast, because none of my work would live without a people struggled together to take on the killing forces of the state Okay. Not quite. Yes, I think I that's one of the really inspiring pieces about your work. And the way that community has adopted it and spread it and taken it up. But I also think the way that you have built communities across time and in different locations. Right? Even with even you talk about being far away from the people in New York in the number of years. But I think you still find ways to sort of to build that community across time and space, and that's one of your gifts to us. Keeps me alive That was my 1 one of my questions for you is what's what is inspiring you right now? What are you reading? That's giving you joy and hope Oh, this I have a huge pile of books, some readings which is our looks independent bookstore here, and it's oh, I I I don't have them in front of me, but i'm meeting a camaroon Hmm no historian novelist i'm i'm Reading a wonderful poet from Bls. Black Lesbian press. I just have. I just decided on my books waiting for me after I watch the World Cup. I have to say, waiting for the I'm meeting a book, and I I'm I need it in my hand, honey, I don't have, but it's a woman who's heritage is Italian, and she's, writing. About the hold of cities on her. So I'm always interested in, and how people leave places behind, and what they carry with them. And how they make sense Yeah. And I'm sure I'll put want me to get the books by a bit. Yeah. No, no, I think it's I, but I think it's wonderful to hear house sort of widely incapaciously. You are reading, and I also know how you you know. Yeah. And Deb mentioned the 2 archives with the one in India, and the one in Indonesia, and I know you. You're always talking with people in different parts of the world. There they look to you for inspiration, and I think you take as much inspiration from them in Oh, and let me let me just yeah, because I just got I saw that one of the founders from the Indian archives is here, and you know it is so it is so? Moving? And really and to see what one that this is an international community. It always was back in the Seventys, but and everyone is running. Everyone has the shadow of extreme nationalism moving over them to do a project of memory of the unwanted. When you have nations that are dedicated to purity, and that can happen in America as well. I mean so so to welcome and to be part of this community. Yes, and I learned no. I learned I learned from them Yes, again. So much love in the in the chat one of the things we've signed you up for is you? You'll have to send a reading list to Sierra and me, and we'll put it in our sinister wisdom. Snapshot on Friday. You're gonna have on Friday, so you're gonna have to do it quickly, because we're taking a little break from the snapshot in. Yeah. January, so we'll get it in our December one before And I just feed every Haitian. Also you can. Many of the users are from when I taught, and I have seek program, and if any of my students are listening and my colleagues I wouldn't be Joan without my almost 30 years of teaching Do colonized writers, but read Haiti haiti haiti! Such richness of culture. So I'll send I'll put on the list of books side. I read and taught. Hmm! Oh. That's fantastic. We're up kissing up to 8 Pm. I wanna thank all of the readers. I'm gonna let Joan have a couple of final words here I'm just no, no, no, I'm just standing up because I really did one show I did where my slip, but I also want to show something else. I don't know those. This is the blue. The only tap to I have for my breast. Cancer treatment. That's part of the the body. Okay. Yes, yes, thank you so much to Joan. The book is a sturdy yes, of the people we're doing advanced orders. Orders will be shipping out by the middle of December. It's beautiful. It's a wonderful collection. It's not complete, which is always hard for me. You know I wanted to be a completest, and I know that that would have taken us up to 8 or 900 pages. Huh! But it's a nice thick, juicy book for folks to dive into. Once you receive your copy, I'm grateful to Carolyn and Yaba, and no Emmy, for joining us this evening, for being part of the journey. Of getting Jones words out into the world and renewing them out into the world. I wanna remind people. If you'd like to bid on the teaker in poster, I think we're at $300. If you want to go higher. Email Sierra will email folks later tonight or tomorrow morning with the winning bidder. I also wanna let folks know that next Tuesday, December, sixth, at 7, 30 Pm. Not 7 Pm. We're doing a reading with Kara's books and more from the new book by Irena Clefish. Her new book, which I'm holding up here is called her birth, and later years it's another wonderful book out from Wesley and University Press. The secret is I read. It came to me, and and I wanted to publish this, and but I had but Rachel Levitzki facilitated a contact with an editor at Wesleyan University, press, and they had the money to Do this beautiful hardcover addition and so i'll be a dialogue with Irena next Tuesday night at 7, 30 Pm. Also my last plug of the evening is this industry wisdom. Calendar is out, and available, and flying off the shelves, Sierra put it together. It's in the small format original artwork for all of the months of try to get P. Everybody's like opens it up to me when when they talk to me. They're like. This is my favorite picture. So here's one, not my favorite, but just one. Everyone has their own. Favorite. You can order this online it has always. It's been an extraordinary pleasure to see you, Joan, to talk to you. We wrap our programs with a little dance number, we dance to the outward, and I think Pam Mcmichael's in the audience. You'll hear her voice on the song. She is the speaker during it, so Pam, if you're still with us, maybe we'll try to highlight you while you're speaking. Do get up and dance. We will highlight folks and I'm looking for Max to give me the queue to be quiet just by starting the song. Thank you all for your support for Joan, for your support, for the work of sinister wisdom, and for all that you do to build viable, active Lesbian communities and Lesbian cultures Oh! Yeah. Helper is the only chance you got. Reclaim our name and not live in shame. You try to crew. By God, come on, us! The hell word is the only chance you got. Oh, can hear me Stop the lion and deny you. Come on and give it a shot, and never the end Get a Good. Oh, really! Be the same whisper. Or do you just hey, Gay? Did your face turn ready to be side? Is there the day to be da As big. Let us be Again. Right Go no there are our name. Alright. Why not? He's that Oh, that's keep up! And like a rare disease. I'm a Persian to play goodbye. Yeah. All the race is a little practice, came my eyes, and everybody said that the No Hey? Hmm! You can't say it. It's hard to see it. If you can't be it, they can't see it. If they can't see it fail tonight. If we all deny it, we're in the closet for life. Oh! Silent people. Grandpa Wow! Thanks! One man. The gang and creams Wow! We are denying to live. We are here, say not, and ready to live when they don't get in So! Hey! Oh, good thing! The in a Cool. Good. Yeah. Say that That man. Yeah. Then, and that our melody as a movement Off your eyes. Do you like me. Crash, or your husband. It's okay. Show. And man look yourself in the eye with forming God, City. Hey! Ill words, say yeah. Said that Good. Yeah. We ask everybody. Okay. Hey! Word to your lover. Thank you all so much. We will see you next time. Hi! Everybody love you Thank you, Julie. Thank you, John. Thank you. Everyone. Thank you. No, I me and Carolyn Thank you. Thank you.Thank you.